The creation of Israel in 1948 is commonly referred to as the nakba: the catastrophe. It is a measure of the disaster of the Arab defeat in June 1967, when al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the Haram al-Sharif were captured that, of all the disasters that the Palestinians have suffered since 1948, that is the one known as the second nakba. This month, the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War will be marked all over the world.
Palestine has seldom been out of the news in recent years. In the last few years the separation wall has been built, the second intifada has taken place, Israel has withdrawn from Ghazzah, and also perpetrated further incursions into and land-appropriation in the West Bank. With all this going on, international humanitarian and human-rights laws have been largely thrown out of the window, and the Israelis continue with impunity to disregard laws and treaties to which they are signatories. In Palestine, the issue of political prisoners is an ongoing one.
The zionist state of Israel has existed in Palestine for nearly 60 years - more than the lifetimes of most Muslims. It is treated as an integral and permanent part of the world map in the hegemonic discourse of the modern West, and all too often by many Muslims as well. A. K. KURTHA reminds us of the Islamic obligation to defeat zionism.
In the sixty years since the creation of Israel in 1947, Palestinians have repeatedly had to defend the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem against threats to it. The latest occasion was last month, when Israeli authorities demolished a ramp leading to the Meghribi gate in the compound’s western wall. RAJNAARA AKHTAR, of Friends of Al-Aqsa, explains the reasons for the Palestinians’ fears.
Palestine: A Personal History by Karl Sabbagh. Pub: Atlantic Books, London, 2006.,Pp: 366 Hbk: £17.99 / Pbk: £9.99.
For a few tense days in December, after the attempted assassination of Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh as he re-entered Ghazzah at the Rafah border crossing, apparently perpetrated by gunmen associated with the Fatah movement led by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, it appeared that Palestine might slide into civil war. As so often in the past, the Palestinians drew back from the brink, knowing that the slightest slip would play into the hands of their enemies.
Just how much more courage and fortitude can the Palestinian people display in their battle against zionis occupation and oppression? Muslims were amazed, and the rest of the world shocked, when the Palestinians last month revealed a new strategy to counter Israeli attacks on them
Months of negotiations between Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders on forming a coalition government, which they hope will break the political deadlock in the country and facilitate the lifting of the West's economic boycott, appeared to reach a significant breakthrough on September 11. It was announced that agreement had finally been reached after a series of meetings in Ghazzah between PA (Palestinian Authority) president Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Fatah, and Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader appointed prime minister after Hamas's stunning victory in January's parliamentary elections.
While the world's attention has been turned towards Lebanon, Israel has also been continuing its economic and military war on the Palestinians. Some 200 Palestinians have been killed in Ghazzah since Israel launched military operations there in early July, ostensibly in response to the capture of one of its soldiers, shortly before the start of the Lebanese war.
Israel's assaults on Ghazzah (starting on June 28) and on Lebanon (since July 12) have nothing to do with the capture of three Israeli soldiers, one by the Palestinians and two by Hizbullah. The demand for their release was merely a pretext to launch a war that had been planned in conjunction with the US several months ago.
A month of Israeli attacks on Palestinian targets in Ghazzah and the West Bank, killing over 40 Palestinians, mostly civilians, culminated with Israeli troops moving into southern Ghazzah on June 28, as Crescent was going to press.
One feature of the massive political pressure on Hamas, the leading Islamic movement and the most popular political force in Palestine, since it was elected to power earlier this year, has been the increasingly open enmity of both secular Palestinian forces, particularly the Fatah movement led by Palestinian “president” Mahmud Abbas, and of Arab rulers.
Three months after Hamas won a decisive victory in the elections for the Palestinian legislative council, and a month after the new Hamas administration was sworn in, it remains under immense political pressure from Israel and Israel’s Western allies to abandon the program on which it was elected and accept instead the West’s plans for the future of Palestine.
Is the West’s war on Islam -- and the Islamic movement in particular -- now reaching a significant new level? That is certainly one conclusion that might be drawn from the intensification of its political, diplomatic and propaganda war on the Islamic State of Iran in recent months. The West has, of course, been at war with Islamic political activism for most of recent history.
For us at Crescent, the month of April was dominated by two conferences, a massive one in Tehran from April 14-16 in support of the Palestinian struggle, attended by about 1,000 people from all over the world, and a much smaller one in London on April 23, convened by Crescent International to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of the late Dr Kalim Siddiqui, Director of the Muslim Institute, London, founder and leader of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain, and the man responsible for transforming Crescent from a local community newspaper in Toronto to an international newsmagazine of the global Islamic movement.
Palestinian people. The conference was attended by Islamic movement leaders from all over the world, as well as leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Palestine. It was chaired by the speaker of the Majlis, Ghulamali Haddad Adel, and opened with speeches by the Rahbar and President of the Islamic State, Ayatullah al-Uzma Sayyid Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Here we publish the text of the address given by the Rahbar.
As this issue of Crescent goes to press, and barely two months after the Palestinians elected Hamas to power in the parts of occupied Palestine in which they have a degree of political autonomy, the people of Israel are going to the polls to elect a new parliament and government.
Officially, the world has been taken by surprise by Hamas’s overwhelming victory in Palestine’s parliamentary elections on January 25. Yes, there had been fears that Hamas would seriously dent Fatah’s long-established dominance of Palestinian politics, and might have to be accommodated in the Fatah-dominated political institutions, perhaps even to the extent of being given a ministry or two, but that was only to be expected, given the problems that Fatah has had in recent months.
As this article is written, it is still far from clear as to whether the Palestinian Legislative Council elections, scheduled for January 25, will take place. At the time, the situation is that special polling centres had opened their doors on January 21 for members of the Palestinian security forces to cast their votes in three days of early voting.
As Crescent International goes to press, it remains uncertain whether the elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) that are due to take place on January 25 will actually go ahead. Israel made a clear attempt to sabotage them on December 21, when it announced that Palestinians in Jerusalem would not be permitted to vote if Hamas were allowed to take part in the polls.
